Improve performance conversations and move from performance ratings

We've blogged beforeabout the importance of performance conversations that managers have with their team members as part of performance review and appraisal - and we've heard recently about the shifts in how organisations view performance ratings. We've commented on this in one of our articles which you can read below.

Whether performance ratings are used or not, we see that there is a strong desire to up-skill managers to have better quality development conversations in order to challenge people’s thinking, increase creativity and drive up ownership and personal accountability.

But, we fear this focus may be too narrow, and it remains a challenge to get managers to buy in to the need for ‘coaching’ as a core skill, with many seeing it as akin to counselling or therapy, too ‘soft’, too time consuming and against the prevailing culture or predominant management style in their organisations.

So how can we move this on?

We think that overriding focus of line management training in the area of talent management should simply be on having better performance conversations and to build a more continuous performance management culture.

Crucially, some of these conversations may look like coaching but they don’t need to be labelled as such.

There are different sorts of conversations which focus much more on:

performance levels,

agreeing goals,

nurturing potential,

personal career planning and

challenging or sensitive issues.

Equipping managers with the ability to identify the opportunities for these different kinds of performance conversations, and with the core skills they need to handle them effectively may be a more holistic approach than just banging the coaching drum.

Our Talent Management for Managers programme covers all of the above and encourages managers to explore their personal leadership challenges and what talent management means, and needs to look like, within their area of responsibility.